After the Throne
by Terrax
Summary: The Raven King's plan came flawlessly to its fruition, and yet what others may consider an ending is merely a beginning to the true war between Ice and Fire. Even as the wolf pack disperses and an uneasy peace settles over Westeros, the seeds of a new conflict are sown both there and across the sea, where a dragon prepares to show the world just how terrible it is to be left alone.
1. Daenerys I

DAENERYS

The first breath was the most difficult and yet the sweetest in her memory.

Clambering to her feet from the ashes, Dany felt the cool night breeze as it caressed her bare flesh. She almost fell again to the earth as she reeled in confusion, as the weight of wonder and despair pressed down on her from above. She had returned, not just to life but to this place, this unforgettable place of red dust and sparse brush. She had been reborn here before, bringing wonders into the world.

Dany snapped out of her woolgathering with the realization that she wasn't here alone. Red-garbed figures cast long shadows as they surrounded her, standing next to their lit braziers and high flames. Seemingly as one, they knelt in the dirt as she rose. All except one. For a moment she thought it was the red priestess she knew, Melisandre of Asshai, but while this woman wore the same garb and had that same ruby pulsing in its choker around her neck, her hair was raven dark to the other's fiery red.

"You have returned to us, Daughter of Fire," that woman said, offering a small genuflection in greeting.

"What am I doing here?" Dany asked, trying to sort reality from dream, to remember what had happened before everything had gone dark. "Who are you?"

"We are your servants, Daenerys Stormborn," the woman replied. "I am Kinvara, High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis, Flame of Truth... need I say it all, to another such as you who has as much and more titles? We came because we were called here by the Lord. We saw in the flames that the Lightbringer would return you here, to the place of miracles."

"The Lightbringer?" Confusion creased Dany's brow momentarily before realization struck. "Drogon! Where is he? What happened to him?" Panic seized her heart as she whirled around, before she spotted the familiar scaled hill that was her last child, curled up in repose and regarding her with his red eyes the reflected the light of the surrounding fires. The dragon let out a low warbling croon and blinked as he met his mother's gaze.

Forgetting for a moment that she was naked, surrounded by red priests in the middle of the wilderness, Dany ran to her child and embraced his snout, joining their warmth. "You're still here," she whispered as she stroked the onyx scales. "You didn't betray me. You didn't leave me." Hot tears coursed down her cheeks as she remembered.

Still stroking Drogon's scales with one hand, Dany dashed the tears away with the back of another and refocused her gaze on Kinvara. "Why here?"

The red priestess smiled. "When a dragon is hurt or in distress, when it is lost or confused, it returns to the place of its birth," she replied. "Yours came here urgently, without food or rest. We were prepared for the former, although only time can take care of the latter."

"That is very generous of you, priestess," Dany replied, even as she realized that she herself felt neither hungry nor tired. Weary, yes, but it was a weariness of the heart and the soul, not of the flesh. "Why did you-?" she left the question hanging in the air, unable to say the rest of it.

"The Lord of Light is not yet finished with you, Daenerys Stormborn," Kinvara answered with that same small smile turning up her lips. "You lost your way, caught in the squabbles of the winter lords, and so it fell to us to help return you to the right path."

"And what do you say is the right way, then, priestess? This place is a long way from Westeros, and my enemies - my true enemies - celebrate even as we speak, no doubt."

"Westeros is not the world, Bride of Fire," Kinvara cautioned. "Let those small men and women in their cold country celebrate. Let them believe your light has gone out and that they can curl up in comfortable darkness. They will be complacent, the Wolf Queen, the Raven King, and all the rest of them. I have seen it in the flames; they will disperse, seemingly victorious."

"And the wheel keeps turning," Dany noted, her voice flat as she smoothed down all the other thoughts that image evoked.

Kinvara shook her head. "Worse, I fear. You were deceived, brought into the quarrel between the forces of winter, and the winner will claim your seat, though no throne remains. Drogon saw that they were deprived of that much."

Scratching at its ridge, Dany stared into a red eye and the dragon cooed soothingly.

"The Raven King will ascend his weirwood seat," the priestess continued, "and he will give them the illusion of the peace they say they want, even as he offers them new chains and new lies. The Children made him for that, to bring the downfall of man. The dispute with the White Walkers was on a matter of means, not ends."

Understanding remained just outside Dany's reach, but the narration gave her the vague shape of it now. "And a lovestruck fool like me got manipulated into settling the matter for them."

"You stopped the more immediate threat, but not the more dangerous one. Once your usefulness was over you had to be discarded, but it didn't occur to them that what was part of their plans could also be part of ours."

Anger gripped Dany's heart, the fury of a dragon awakened. "Say what you mean by that," she demanded through clenched teeth, and under her hand, Drogon let out a small threatening rumble.

"Pray forgive me, for there was nothing we could do save let them think they had won," the priestess pleaded, her ingratiating smile now gone. "We knew there was no way we could keep you from crossing the Narrow Sea, and once you were over, there was little we could change. Your father, your brother... they were the culmination of the work of millennia, a weight we could not move. But now that you have returned, you are outside their reach. And you must strive to stay that way."

"So I am to remain in Essos forever, then?"

Kinvara shook her head. "No, but you must learn to conceal yourself from their gaze. Right here, right now, the Raven King's sight does not reach us, for we have cleared away all the birds and never have the weirwoods come this far yet. The night is dark and full of terrors, but the darkness concealed your dragon's path, something he'll be able to pick up again after the dawn."

"You would separate me from my last child?" Dany asked, understanding that much of the thrust of the priestess' intentions.

"I would fool the Raven King, for a time," Kinvara replied. "For you, we have proper garb and the mask of a shadowbinder. We will convey you from here on a journey again to Qarth, and from there to Asshai, where you will become a shadowbinder in truth and where your child can again join you, free from the Raven King's eyes. I have seen it in the flames: you and he must follow the Stygai to the black doors and beyond, and pass beneath the Shadow. When you emerge, the Raven King will be blind to the both of you."

It was at the mention of proper garb that Dany remembered her nakedness. She registered that the night air was cold, yet it did not chill her as it once would. Looking at her hand stroking Drogon another thought bloomed. _I, too, have become fire made flesh._

That wasn't what she said aloud, though. "Become a shadowbinder?"

"The brightest lights, the hottest fires cast the darkest shadows, and no flame in this world can match yours now. The dragonlords of Valyria were powerful sorcerers and so too shall you be. You must claim your birthright; once you have passed through the Shadow, you must fly to Valyria, the Lands of Always Summer, and temper yourself among the Fourteen Flames there. Your heritage awaits you, Daenerys of House Targaryen."

Dany had returned dragons to the world and passed beyond death, and yet the priestess' narration was still surreal to her, the kind of thing she had heard from Viserys when she was a little girl and he was telling her of their heritage, what the blood of the dragon meant. So much knowledge and power had been lost to the Doom, so much that could have helped her.

Slowly, Dany nodded her assent. "Very well." Strangely, she did not have to work very hard to repress the urge to leap on Drogon's back and return to Westeros, to serve fire and blood to all of those who had wronged her. Whether it was some sorcery of the priestess' words or something else, she believed, and right now above all else she needed something to believe in.

"Let us begin, then," Kinvara replied, her smile returning. "There is much and more for you to learn, and we must ensure you are well concealed before the dawn breaks."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is a continuation of the tale from the end of the show, seeking to ride a dragon through the dragon-sized holes left in it all. Some book canon and characters will be invoked to fill in certain gaps here and there, but since we're living in the universe of the television series, we also get to play with all the _wonderful_ handwaves it felt like playing with... such as Daenerys having a perfectly intact body, given the dragons can apparently fly straight from Dragonstone to Beyond the Wall without much issue.

This is absolutely, positively, never a follow-up to the books, only the show. I imagine the books will be satisfying enough to not merit this sort of treatment, if they ever come into being.


	2. Sarella I

SARELLA

Sarella Sand wrinkled her nose as she approached the Threefold Gate. In the best of times, she hated returning here, and circumstances now were far from the best, what with her father, his paramour, and her three older sisters all fallen after sticking their noses into the cesspool of royal politics. But she had no choice, not with a new Prince ruling here in Sunspear.

The Sphinx preferred Oldtown and its mixed mass of humanity over the startling sameness that was Sunspear. Girdled by the Winding Walls, surrounded by mud-brick shops and windowless huts of the Shadow City, it was a definite step down from the ancient melting pot stirred by the Hightower and the Citadel. There, she blended in and mingled in the rhythm and music of life; here, she was a girl just a shade too dark to mix in with the bronze-skinned descendants of the Rhoynar, the heritage from her Summer Islander mother showing through.

That difference got her stares and looks, but it did come with at least one advantage: none of the guards at the three gates leading up to the Old Palace made it difficult for her. She was expected.

Looking up at the ancient keep, at its Tower of the Sun and its Spear Tower, Sarella prayed that she didn't end up in the latter by the end of this trip. Her wayward half-siblings and their ill-fated coup made that a possibility, this time, and that would be rather inconvenient for what she was considering.

Entry continued to be smooth, and even as she darkly pondered a stay in the Spear Tower she was led by an attendant to meet her royal cousin in a courtyard. Prince Mors, the third of that name to hold the title, was a young man, although older than her ill-fated cousin Trystane. A descendant in a cadet branch of House Martell, he had been there in the background but had likely never dreamed that this seat would be his one day.

As the Prince stood from his chair and greeted her, Sarella could not help but recall at that moment that here in Dorne, where bastardry and feminity weren't barriers, she very well could have taken that seat herself before him. A chill ran over her, although whether it was the remnants of the recent short winter or the shadow of the Spear Tower she couldn't tell.

"Please, cousin, have a seat," the Prince said, smiling and gesturing to another chair opposite his, across a lacquered circular table stamped with the sun and spear of his house.

"Thank you," the Sphinx replied with a forced smile of her own, pulling herself back into the present as she accepted the Prince's invitation.

Mors returned to his own seat, slouching in it as the fingers of one hand toyed with the hilt of his belt dagger. "Should I be worried, cousin?" he asked, breaking the tense silence.

Sarella laughed at the refreshingly direct question, and the tension drained away from her as she did. The Prince was just as nervous as she had been, if not more, it seemed. "I am not my sisters, and you are not the old Prince."

Mors let out a breath of relief. "I suppose not," he agreed.

"Now that I've satisfied your curiosity, perhaps you could satisfy mine, cousin?" Sarella ventured as candor seemed to be the order of the day.

"Ask," the prince replied with an indulgent smile twisting his lips upward.

"Why is it the Six Kingdoms and not the Five Kingdoms, or even fewer?"

Mors' lips slipped from mirth to bitterness at that. "I arrived in King's Landing hoping to pledge my troth to a Dragon Queen, only to find her gone and several armies all looking for excuses to start slaughtering each other left in her wake. You know as well as I that Dorne's strength lies in our advantages over our terrain, not in our numbers, and I had no desire to cast my lot so far north of home, surrounded by hostiles from all sides."

"And yet the Wolf Queen held no such compunction," Sarella noted.

"Nor would she, surrounded by family and allies as she was, and having the largest unified force there."

"And so we are stuck in an alliance we don't get to set the terms on. We wed the dragons, not the wolves."

Mors shook his head. "And I sought to wed a dragon again, but it wasn't meant to be. And there's little point in saying anything about it now. I'm sure you've heard stories of our new king over in Oldtown by now, haven't you?"

Sarella smiled. "Indeed, I have. And if I may, there is something I should do right now if you do not object."

The Prince shrugged, offering no resistance, although his eyes became guarded as he watched Sarella reach into a pouch and pull out a cone of incense. She looked around at the courtyard, at the coal-laden braziers that kept the trees from frosting over and tossed the cone into the nearest one. A loud crackle and a pop later, and a pungent odor wafted over the both of them, all of the birds in the courtyard screaming their protest as they took flight.

"Apologies, cousin. To drive away the birds, you see," Sarella explained. "Our young king is far from the world's only repository of arcane knowledge. The Citadel keeps its own secrets close, and this isn't the first time they've had to deal with the Children or their greenseers. We should be able to speak freely for a while; if he had been paying attention already we would've seen a bird or two trying to linger."

"Clever," Mors acknowledged before going into a small coughing fit. "If a bit... smelly."

"Tell it to me true, cousin," Sarella said, ignoring the Prince's momentary discomfort. "Do you intend to stick around inside these Six Kingdoms, or will you live up to the words of the Martells?" _Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken._ A seeming joke after recent events, but a reminder of what could be, if they were bold enough.

The Prince cleared his throat, waving away the fumes from his face. "I would be free, but that takes more than just deciding. Even if we can avoid the King here between us, he can see other kinds of movements and grow suspicious of those. We've avoided the worst of it down here, and I'm still not sure if our people are willing to offer themselves up an invite worse to come. Especially since we'd be alone here."

"Would we? Be alone, that is," Sarella clarified. "The new Lord of the Reach is precariously perched - the Hightowers are all but satisfied with that appointment, you know - and the stag and the lion are both in weak positions and led by leaders in no less precarious positions. The kraken is probably less than pleased with the final disposition of things, even if the eagle and the trout have fallen in line."

"Be that as it may, it's exceedingly difficult to establish an alliance when we're broadcasting that we're up to something with clouds of whatever that is hanging over us wherever we go," Mors complained.

Sarella smiled, reaching again into a pouch on hanging from her belt. "And if I said there was another way, would that change what you're willing to risk? Or will you be another Doran, forever ripening plans until they are overripe and you are the one falling from the tree to splatter to the pavement?"

"I thought we weren't going to threaten one another, Sarella," Mors replied.

"As a student of history I'm just noting the most likely outcome, cousin," Sarella explained. Then she winced as a finger brushed against something in her pack and was cut. Pulling out the offending object, she set it on the table between them.

Standing in the center of the stylized sun-and-spear was a small pillar of twisted dragonglass, a frozen flame in the rough shape of a bizarre candle. "There are many secrets we keep in the Citadel, cousin, hoping they don't ever need again to see the light of day. Given that a greenseer rules in King's Landing and he's been presumptuous enough to name a one-link neophyte as his Grand Maester, I could be forgiven for bending a few more rules than usual. Ever hear about the glass candles of old and what they could do?"


	3. Brienne I

BRIENNE

There was a strange comfort in returning to the White Sword Tower - though it would be more apt to call it the White Sword Stump as the rebuilding of it was still limited to its ground floor - and to sit at the head of the table and run her hand over the White Book. As fate would have it, the book that chronicled the deeds of the knights of the Kingsguard had survived the original tower's collapse intact and undamaged.

Brienne found herself in need of much solace as of late, though the life-threatening travails of her long journey had ended. The comfort in touching the book that Ser Jaime had once touched was tempered by the knowledge that she could perhaps never forgive him his final act of defiance. She had thought that the chronicling of his journey and its end, of dressing it up in the flowery language of the book, might have made those embers of mixed emotion within her cool, but still they continued to burn.

There was another problem with the book now, too. As a Kingsguard, as its Lord Commander - Brienne had swiftly put down the notion of changing that to Lady Commander for her sake - she needed to begin her own entry, but every time she tried she ended up staring at a blank page, quill in hand, for hours on end. What was she supposed to write? About Ser Brienne of Tarth, Brienne the Beauty, Brienne the Abandoned?

In search of inspiration, she would read the pages, recalling the tales of those who came before her. Of Ser Criston Cole, the Kingmaker, who had turned on the woman he had loved and whose champion he had been and set the crown on her half-brother's head, and so sparked the most brutal of the wars among the dragons of Westeros. Of Aemon the Dragonknight, who had loved a royal sister so much that the possibility of an affair opened the door for the rebellions of the Blackfyres.

The Targaryens and their knights certainly made it difficult to take one's mind off the Kingslayer.

And what of their new King, the one she had come south partially at Lady Sansa's behest to serve? Brandon Stark was an enigma that defied easy definition. A wizard of the forest, a so-called greenseer, he had come to live in a city of stone and brick, where the nearest weirwood was a mere stump. Efforts were already being made the change that, with the discussion of saplings and plantings being one of the few conversations the young King bestirred himself to take an active part in, but otherwise most of what he spoke of was cryptic and obscure when he spoke at all.

That was concerning enough without considering the Small Council, on which she now sat. Ser Davos was a kind and gentle man, of low birth but vast knowledge when it came to all things nautical, and she got on well enough with the Grand Maester, though Samwell Tarly still looked twenty years too young for the job. The Hand and the Master of Coin were a pair of known lechers, however, and nary did they make it through a meeting without bringing up something seemingly tailored to make her hackles rise and her skin crawl. That was no excuse in itself for her misgivings about them, but it was coupled with the fact that neither seemed particularly competent at their work, though Brienne could not fault Ser Jaime's brother for his earnestness, at least.

Brienne didn't feel much more competent as a Lord Commander herself. So far the prospects for elevation to the company of the Kingsguard were sparse and difficult to convince, and so her and Podrick were the only ones in white cloaks still. The Kingdoms had been ravaged and the ranks of its houses depleted, and many second and third sons and sons of cadet branches that would have provided a crop for recruitment were now first sons if not lords themselves now. There was scarcely a knight hiding under a hedge to be found, even. All of them had gone home, gone on to their families and lives, rushing to prepare for the first plantings of spring.

That was well and good for all of them, and Brienne was hardly one to find fault in the appreciation of a simpler life, but it made things awfully difficult for her. With only two Kingsguard, and at least one always needing to be in attendance on His Majesty, she and Podrick were stretched thin. Even as she sat at the White Table, Brienne was wasting precious time to handle her necessaries, to eat and sleep and all the rest of it, before Podrick sent a page so he could be relieved to handle those things himself.

The stirrings of guilt churned in Brienne as she thought about it. Although Pod was ever cheerful and eager to please, their young, broken king had requirements that challenged them, and many of those fell to him to take care of. What else could be done for a young man who couldn't even use a privy or take a bath unassisted? She wasn't the squeamish type, what with all the blood she had spilled, but nevertheless she was often elsewise occupied when the time came for such activities, leaving it all to her only fellow Kingsguard to be present.

It was laughable, these little contortions in the face of so many other problems, but there was little she could do for all of those. All she had now was her own duty, her way of keeping the faith with Lady Catelyn and her daughter. Brienne had considered remaining in the North, but Sansa had made it clear that the North was returning to the ways of the First Men, of weirwood and wolf, and that those ways had little room for the rainbow of the Seven or their anointed knights, and that the best way she could serve was by keeping the Stark in the south safe.

And so she would, come what may. Though it may make her a white-cloaked, golden armored nursemaid, she knew her duty. Strangely renewed by that knowledge, Brienne rose from the table, releasing the White Book from her grasp, possessed of a new, if maybe only temporary, determination. For this time, at least, Pod wouldn't need to call for her to be relieved.


	4. Daenerys II

DAENERYS

It took until they were halfway through the Red Wastes before the grief finally overwhelmed her and the tears came.

"Is everything all right, Great One?" a small voice from the steed next to hers asked in Valyrian.

No, everything is wrong, Dany wanted to say, terribly, horribly wrong. But she wouldn't, she couldn't. The blood of so many stained her hands, and it had all been for nothing, for less than nothing. She turned to regard the source of the voice, and her own words stuck in her throat as she beheld this riding companion of hers. A young girl, scarcely old enough to know her letters, and yet her dark skin was already marked with the slave tattoos of an initiate to the Red Temple, the red flames marring her cheeks.

"I am all right, little one," Dany finally managed. "Just the dust of the road."

"This one apologizes, then, Great One," the girl replied, and Dany once again felt her heart ache, this time for Missandei. She remembered when they had met, among the bricks of mud and blood of Astapor, and the translator had used the same turn of phrase. This one.

"Don't," Dany replied. "You have a kind heart. That's something you should never have to apologize for." Oh, how she wished those words were true. "Do you have a name?"

"This one is Serana, Great One," the girl replied.

"Please, say Your Grace, not Great One. That sounds too much like a slave owner's title, and I am the Breaker of Chains." The Murderer of Children, more like it. Children, little children, a voice in Dany's memory reminded her, and her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to banish all thought of him.

"Perhaps Your Grace needs a veil if the dust is so harsh on your eyes?" The girl offered, obvious concern furrowing her brow.

"It is nice of you to offer it, but I don't need one, Serana," Dany replied, shaking her head. Already her face was covered in the hexagonal medallions of a shadowbinder's mask, how much more ridiculous would she look with a veil on top of it?

"Perhaps it would be good to stop for a little while anyway," a voice from Dany's other side offered. The priestess, Kinvara, her face pasted with that knowing smirk. She had never been far during this journey as she had been teaching what she could as they traveled. "I take it you are feeling a great many things once again, aren't you, Daenerys Stormborn?"

"And if I am?"

"Then we should rejoice, for it means the last of the spider's venom has run its course," Kinvara explained.

"What?" Confusion clouded Dany's thoughts, as she tried to put together the events before her death. She hadn't been bitten by a spider, though.

"A mere figure of speech," the priestess continued, her permanent smirk somehow now apologetic. "Had I known it when I met him, I would have done more than scare that eunuch. He was trapped in a prison of his own creation, a plotter without a plot, the object of his ambition slipped on some rocks along the Rhoyne. For you, though, his sting survived after his death. A serving girl paid in jewelry, a small dollop of a spicy paste of basilisk's blood, and your righteous fury was amplified a thousandfold. A final act of revenge on a world that wept not for vermin like him."

Dany clutched at her reins, more questions than answers stemming for those words. "Varys," she said aloud, that much made clear. "But why? How would that have put Jon on the throne?"

The priestess let out a throaty chuckle. "The Spider never intended the throne for either of you. Varys Blackfyre traded his manly parts and everything he could pawn so that a second-rate sorcerer could divine the right path for his family to succeed. The voice accepted his payment, his sacrifice of his own future, and so the young destitute mummer managed to marry his sister to a cheesemonger of your acquaintance, one whose fortunes would rise and who would father a son cast in the mold of his mother's dragon blood."

"Illyrio?"

Kinvara nodded. "It was a perfect plan, driving your father further into his paranoia and madness, and then using you and your brother to distract the eyes of the world, even as he prepared a dragon of his own. You were supposed to die out on the Dothraki Sea, your Khal angry enough to take revenge and cross the bitter water. And then a savior would come in that time of peril."

"And what happened to that?" Dany asked, her heart pounding as she considered the perilous depths that were lurking beneath her feet all this time.

"Your bear happened, and the Dothraki went in another direction," Kinvara explained. "And then an accident, a young man playing on the wet rocks of the Rhoyne and slipping, a broken skull leading to the end of those ambitions. The Spider took out the frustrations on his wizard, blaming him for not foreseeing that end. I warned Varys, extended him the chance to truly do good for the realm as he always claimed he wanted to, but it seems that hatred won out for him in the end."

"So, then, the rage, the fury..." Dany hesitated to ask further.

"Both were and were not yours. You are of the dragon's blood; it should be no surprise that passions come easily. But the little poisoner's paste stoked a bonfire into a firestorm." Kinvara shook her head. "Do not dwell on the Spider, he has already received his traitor's reward. The Raven King, the servant of the Great Other, would have seen it done one way or another. Death by fire is the purest of deaths; be glad you could offer that to the people rather than what else he might have resorted to."

"They are dead, and I killed them, and nothing can change that, Kinvara," Dany replied, withdrawing into that safe place within herself for the remainder of the day's ride, saying no more on that or any other subject as she wrestled with her demons.

Late that night, concealed inside the crimson draperies of a tent and the darkness outside and free of her mask, Dany made a decision. "Serana," she called to the child nearby.

"Yes, Your Grace?" the girl replied.

"Are you any good at cutting hair?"

"N-not exactly, Your Grace," the girl admitted nervously.

"Nonetheless, I need your help," Dany said. "It's time I cut mine short since it's such a trouble to keep it arranged now." She left unexplained that she no longer had the right to her braid. She had lost, completely and utterly, and the braid was forfeit.

The hair would regrow soon enough, and a new braid could be woven, once Dany had new victories to tell of. She promised to herself that those would come soon enough. And this time she would ensure she would pay the price for them, not innocents, no matter what the Red Priests thought about it.


End file.
